


Three Weeks and Four days

by Merc_with_a_mouth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Suicide, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 10:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10569198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merc_with_a_mouth/pseuds/Merc_with_a_mouth
Summary: Through the eyes of John Watson after Sherlock's supposed suicide attempt





	

The first days were the easiest.

“Keep your eyes fixed on me.” Static rings through the air. His head pounds. Brutal. Agony. “Please, will you do this for me?”  
“Do what?” Oh how he wishes he could return to that beautiful moment of ignorance. He never believed he'd actually do it.  
“This phone call – it’s, er ... it’s my note. It’s what people do, don’t they – leave a note?” Confusion but also a strange sense of familiarity. A note? What for? Sherlock, he never could understand people, perhaps it was because he had transcended them or perhaps it was his overbearing arrogance. But by now John has begun to feel just as clueless.  
“Goodbye, John.”  
“SHERLOCK,” his eyes snap open. His pants are thick and fast but steady as he realises. Sweat matts every square inch of his toughened skin. He can't carry on like this.  
The flat still smells like him. A strangely comforting aroma that burns thick in his nose. The scent of a man who had gone without a shower for days but still managed to present himself as clean. The faint smell of nicotine and tar despite his adamant protests he had given up. But most prominent of all are the voices, the sounds he hears in the middle of the night. His very own ghosts.  
He can still hear the violin. Bach, Mendelssohn, Sarasate. It doesn't matter. He can hear the faint screeching as the minims, crochets and quavers intertwine into something beyond beautiful. And when he composed...  
He can hear the doors and floorboards creak at night and when he hears it his heart skips. Hope resonates within him. Maybe he's alive. Maybe he has come back. John knew he'd never leave him. But where is he now?

It's been three days. Since... since the f-fall. John has yet to leave the flat. The walls haunt him, taunt him. But hope- hope breaks through all of that.  
Sherlock wouldn't leave him. Couldn't leave him. It's just the two of them against the rest of the world after all.  
“I'd be lost without my blogger.” THEN WHY AREN'T YOU HERE NOW. John is lost without his arrogant, annoying dick of a consulting detective too. Their lives are part of one eternity. Without the other, John is incomplete. He is like the Earth without his sun. Drifting, with no centripetal force to to steady him; no heat to give him purpose. He has no friends, no job, nothing.  
Three days. That's all it took, for everyone to give up; for everyone to believe that sherlock is... is- but not John. He couldn't. He can't. This is another one of Sherlock's ploys. “The game is on” or so he would say. This is an act. A facade. An illusion.

Clad in a black suit, he walks out of the door of 221b Baker Street. Cameras strobe and flash in front of his face. Reporters scream his name, the kind of attention he once lusted for but now despises. He would rather be a recluse. He wishes no knew his name, or his identity.  
“John? John?” The scream, all eager for the scoop on one of the hardest days of Watson's life. They can't even give him this one day in peace. It's all, always about Sherlock.  
“No comment.” John mutters but the syllables catch in his throat. He has barely spoken since that day. He was always afraid of what might come out.  
“Was it really suicide?” One of the vultures shouts over the noise. A microphone is thrust towards his mouth but he has no intention of answering the question. 'No it was not a suicide. Sherlock is not dead. He isn't dead.'  
“No comment.” He growls a little more assertive than previously. His hands ball into fists by his sides. He wants nothing more than to pull the gun from his breast pocket and shoot each and everyone of them square in the face. Sherlock's advice: a gun is necessary for any occasion, and by Job he is beginning to believe it now. “We just want to be left to grieve in peace.” He ensures his vowels are steady but he knows they won't give in. They are hunters searching for their next kill.  
A black car pulls up in front of him. Greg Lestrade climbs out of the front seat to hold the back door open for John.  
“Stand back or I'll have to hold you in contempt.” A small smile tugs at his lips, as if trying to reassure John.  
“Richard Brook, real or fake?”  
“This is your last warning.” Lestrade yells, with handcuffs as John climbs in to the backseat. The door seals shut behind him. “I'm afraid we have no comment and we politely ask you to respect John's privacy through his time of grieving.” With those final words he climbs into the front seat and drives towards the cemetery.

“Sherlock Holmes” written in a gold font across a black marble headstone. A headstone approximately two foot high- that's all he gets. Maybe its because they know. If he is dead, which John is sure he isn't, then of course he deserves better.  
“John?” A hand is rested upon his shoulder. He looks up towards the priest. Ironic really. A man who believed religion to be the delusion of the small minded man (an evolutionary flaw designed to give humanity a supposed purpose), an atheist to say the least, having a religious ceremony to mark his 'passing'. Ludicrous.  
The priest signals towards the head of the coffin, suspended above a six foot pit in the ground. Six feet deep seems unnecessary. He's hardly going to claw his way back out... and even if he does, at least he's alive.  
His paces are small, timid and uncertain. He reaches his post and shrinks almost immediately beneath the weight of the eyes. He has a speech, but right now it doesn't seem enough. Sherlock Holmes deserves more. He has never felt so small; he has never felt so inadequate; and he has never felt so lonely.  
“Look, I find it difficult... I find it difficult, this sort of stuff.” He has to say something but the screwed up speech within his pocket isn't enough. For the great Sherlock Holmes it never could be. No amount of words can ever describe the impact the detective has had on John's life. “You were the best and wisest man...” He breathes in deeply. The words feel wrong within his mouth. He shouldn't be saying this. None of this. Sherlock is not dead. “that I have ever known. And I forgive you.” Of course he does. That is the most profound thing he can say in that moment. If Sherlock is alive, John is sure he'd be listening in. He has to known. He has to know it's okay.

 

“It's been a week. A week. Sherlock hasn't come back.” His fingers type slowly over the keyboard. His eyes are glassy, blurry and John is certain many factors have contributed to this.  
Perhaps it's the lack of sleep. He has been plagued by insomnia. Every time he shuts his eyes, he is forced to watch Sherlock fall again. He tries to look for plot holes in his dreams- any way that Sherlock could have escaped- but he knows he's hanging on hopes.  
And maybe it's the alcohol. A glass of scotch stuck permanently to his hand. It took him four days to reach for the booze. If nothing else then just to block out the voices. A simple breeze, that's all it takes for John's head to snap up in search of his detective. He just wanted a distraction.  
“Whatever happened to 'you and me against the rest of the world'”. Everyday John writes. Every godforsaken day he takes out his laptop and types what ever is on his overly intoxicated mind. “You promised.” Some days he is just one drink away from posting his entire internal monologue but he never does. His blog was for his and Sherlock's adventures, he doesn't want to ruin that. His creative space is reserved ready for when Sherlock returns.

Two weeks. Mrs Hudson began to notice more and more that John wasn't coping. His brave face had failed. He barely ate, he barely slept, he barely got dressed. His diet consisted of a litre of scotch and two hours sleep a day.  
The worst of days, Mrs Hudson would come up to find him passed out in a pile of his own vomit and on the best she'd find him sat facing Sherlock's chair with tear stained cheeks, as if waiting for the absent figure to say something, anything. He waited for hours. Until he finally fell asleep and when he woke the cycle repeated itself.  
Somedays he'd sit silently, for almost twenty four hours, in Sherlock's room as if being surrounded by his possession helped him to feel closer to the detective; but all it did was make him feel more and more lonely.  
Every morning Mrs Hudson would set a cup of tea in a space beside John (wherever he would be) and at noon she'd return to find it stone cold and untouched.  
“You're not okay.” She whispers one morning. John had fallen asleep with his scotch still in hand and now he is keeled over the toilet bowl with Mrs Hudson stood noticeably concerned in the doorway.  
“I'm fine.” He grunts but clearly he is far from this concept of 'fine' he believes to be. If his years in the army taught him anything, weakness can get you killed. Strength must be valued and if that means pretending then he is going to do it. But pretending isn't going all to well.  
“No you're not! You need help. First thing tomorrow you're going back to your therapist. You can't carry on like this.”  
“Carry on like what? Being alone. Sherlock was all I had, my best friend, my only friend.” He snaps but unintentionally so. Mrs Hudson is but a victim in Sherlock's delicately crafted web of destruction but grief has got the better of John.  
“You need to move on.”  
“Move on? I can't. He'll be back soon. Just you wait and see...”

Two weeks and one day. His leg itches. The pain returns. It feels as if a bullet is attempting to claw its way out. His limp- psychosomatic. The bullet never resided within his leg. His shoulder was the victim but the agony is returning.  
His skin feels as though it is bubbling against his human carcass. Not even alcohol can dampen the pain.  
He is itching but maybe his leg is just an excuse. He is itching for his next fix and suddenly he is propelled into his far less superior mind set of Sherlock. Sherlock craved a puzzle but John, John craves something far sweeter. He craves danger. The adrenaline. The blood pumping through his veins so loud he can hear his own heart beat... Bliss.  
Nothing can compare to the thrill of the chase. Guns firing in the near distance, could there be a sweeter sound? John thinks not.  
He tries to stand but his leg gives way almost immediately. Sherlock seemed to be his antidote but he has decided to take a break. John is feeling the full and complete effects of his distance right about now.  
“Psychosomatic.” He whispers to himself. If it's in his mind he can defeat it. Sherlock can defeat it when he comes back but that doesn't help him now.  
He needs something to block out the pain. Over the counter drugs never did work but the sheer euphoria of an IV pumping morphine through his bloodstream comes to mind. Suddenly he craves the feeling of weightlessness all over again, but he isn't sure whether to get rid of the pain or to get rid of Sherlock if just for a while.  
The thought alone raises him to his unsteady feet before lowering him to his knees atop the ground. He knows Sherlock better than pretty much anyone and he is certain his stash is somewhere close.  
On hands and knees he scrambles across the floor.  
“Into the mind of a sociopath.” Beneath the mattress? Too obvious. In the pocket of a spare coat? He has lots of coats but alas no. Too simple. John never proclaimed to be a genius, in fact for from it. He is but a simple minded, subservient man but now is his chance to declare a new found intelligence. If pain can do anything, it can motivate him to find the gold.  
His fingers run softly down a crack in a floorboard. No other board possesses such a mark, if not for the dust you'd think the floor had just been laid. But the curiousity of that flawed plank of wood, intrigues him for just a while. The slit is small, so only a keen eye would take note but John's pain induced perception provides the perfect conditions for such a find.  
“The game is on,” he growls lightly, with a sudden and slight sycophantic delight. His game may not be his usually fix but today that matters not.  
With one hand he knocks lightly on the wood trying to find a hollowed out section in which one could hide all manner of things. Funny how an addict's mind works when denied the thing they crave most. With each tap the echo seems to increase ever so slightly. It is clear when John hits his mark. The dullness in the background of the knock has gone.  
With both hands he lifts the floorboard from its usual residing place and is able to witness the delights within.  
“Case closed.” A short but satisfying case.  
It is not at all out of place to find Sherlock's stash here. This is where he sits when he sets himself up on a high.  
Much like a shadow of Sherlock's previous actions, John sits cross legged in the middle of the room. He ties a small piece of elasticated string he found within the floor around his arm. Sherlock, being the compulsive perfectionist he is, has labelled each and every syringe exactly. A seven percent solution of cocaine? Not today. The highest dosage of morphine readily available? Why of course.  
He lines the tip of the needle up with joint of his arm, ready to make an incision. He pushes the needle in and injects the high directly into his bloodstream with a sickening moan of delighted joy. His eyes roll back into his head with absolute and complete pleasure in that single moment.  
The pain dissipates almost immediately, leaving John up in the clouds. It's temporary. However, in the moment he forgets. He pictures this as the perfect permanent solution to a temporary problem. He'll stop when Sherlock comes home.

He wakes up. The mist of whatever drug he laced into his bloodstream gone. The ache has returned but it isn't the most potent feeling within the doctor.  
He despises himself for allowing what he did last night. He used to stand so high and mighty above Sherlock and declare drug taking an abomination. He used to suggest Sherlock's addiction to narcotics was a flaw in an otherwise prime specimen of humanity; but who would he be to criticise the detective now. He has stooped just as far, just as quickly. He doesn't deserve to criticise Sherlock any longer.  
“You turned me into something so much worse. You made me into this.” A sob catches in John's throat. “You made me something I never wanted to be- you!” He can't help it. All his anger comes out in that one moment but there isn't much. His emotions consist primarily of sorrow, melancholy and sheer loneliness. “Just come home.”

Three weeks exactly. Bartholomew's hospital. Today has been the worst of days. He'd found a newspaper clipping of the first case they had ever solved. What followed he isn't proud of.  
The gravel is tough beneath his shoes but he enjoys the London silence.  
The shattered carcass of a phone, tossed onto the ground, sits near his feet. He is frozen still. His body shakes. That phone, his note, all of it. He can't do this anymore.  
He paces slowly, with tremors in his knees, towards the edge.  
“This is my note.” He whispers beneath his breath.  
He climbs up onto the edge and stands. His entire body shudders in the cold or perhaps out of fear.  
“I know you can hear me wherever you are and this is my note. I can't do this without you. I can't be alone anymore. I'm sorry.” He looks down. The pavement still stained red with blood. There'll be more soon.  
“Goodbye.”  
“JOHN!”

“Why today?” Three weeks and three days: John broke. He finally gave in the Mrs Hudson's persistant pleas for him to visit a therapist.  
“D'you want to hear me say it?” He can just about spit out the words.  
“Eighteen months since our last appointment.” John knows perfectly well how long he avoided therapy. He believed himself to be cured but apparently a consulting detective can only bandage over his serious issues for so long.  
“Do you read the papers?” He knows she knows. A slight anger burns within his chest. She knows so why is she forcing the words from his unwilling mouth.  
“Sometimes.” Of course she does. You don't need to be Sherlock to see that much.  
“Mmm, and you watch telly? You know why I’m here.” A pained groan escapes his lips towards the end of his sentence. This is a technique designed to make him confront his problems and admit them aloud for the first time. “I'm here because...”  
“What happened, John?” She stare across at him sympathetically. Everything she thought she'd fixed is back.  
“Sher...”  
“You need to get it out.”  
“My best friend ... Sherlock Holmes ...” He sniffs loudly through his tears. “...is dead.”

The taxi ride is solemn. Mrs Hudson sits at his side with a bunch of flowers in hand. Ella, John's therapist, told him to let it. She suggested going to Sherlock's grave and saying everything he left unsaid. She told him he would begin to accept if he did this.

“There’s all the stuff, all the science equipment. I left it all in boxes. I don’t know what needs doing. I thought I’d take it to a school.“ Mrs hudson looks up at John expectantly but he has little reaction (other than a slight grimace) to her words. “Would you...?”  
“I can’t go back to the flat again – not at the moment.” Something stirs within him. “I'm angry.” He can't be surrounded by Sherlock's stuff and their memories. He can't carry on living with his ghosts. He takes in a deep breath through his nose in an attempt not to break down.  
“It’s okay, John. There’s nothing unusual in that. That’s the way he made everyone feel. All the marks on my table; and the noise– firing guns at half past one in the morning!”  
“Yeah.” She doesn't understand. Sh never had the connection with Sherlock that John did.  
“Bloody specimens in my fridge. Imagine – keeping bodies where there’s food!”  
“Yes.” He mumbles through gritted teeth. Whatever happened to not “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum”? Whatever happened to “don't speak ill of the dead”?  
“And the fighting! Drove me up the wall with all his carryings-on!” John turns to look at her out of the corner of his eye. This is supposed to be his moment of self acceptance but all he seems to want to do is defend Sherlock. He is supposed to be moving on.  
“Yeah, listen: I-I’m not actually that angry, okay?”  
“I’ll leave you alone to, erm ...” Her voice breaks a little. Of course she loved Sherlock really. “... you know.” She turns and leaves John to mutter his final farewell.  
“Um...mmm” These words are hard. Everything he wants to say he has said before but in riddles. He has never been one to be upfront but now he must be, for his own sakes more than anybody elses. “You... you told me once that you weren't a hero. Ummm... there were times I didn't even think you were human,” a small chuckle escapes his lips. “but let me tell you this: you were the best man, and the most human... human being that I've ever known and no-one will ever convince me that you told me a lie, and so... There.” He breathes out heavily. A slight whimper escapes his lips. He gazes over his shoulder at Mrs Hudson but she appears to be looking the other way.  
He steps forward ever so slightly and places his hand atop the headstone.  
“I was so alone, and I owe you so much.” He takes in a deep tearful breath. “Okay.” He starts to walk away but only reaches the foot of the grave before turning back. There is still too much left unsaid. “'No please, there's just on more thing, mate, one more thing: one more miracle Sherlock, for me. Don't... be...” His voice cracks. “... dead. Would you do...? Just for me, just stop it. Stop this.” He sighs lowering his head and just stands there- the broken empty shell of a soldier he has been for a long time. He allows himself to break even if just a little.  
A minute or so passes. He wipes his eyes with one hand and raises his head, coming to attention. He nods a salute- a soldier's tribute, the least of what sherlock deserves- and walks away.

Six months.  
“And you are...?” He looks up with a familiar half smirk that has been absent for so long.  
“Mary Morstan.”


End file.
